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I find this statement from Facebook in the article to be oddly worded, as if it was carefully constructed by a lawyer to avoid getting caught in a lie: "Facebo

I find this statement from Facebook in the article to be oddly worded, as if it was carefully constructed by a lawyer to avoid getting caught in a lie: "Facebook does not use your phone's microphone to inform ads or to change what you see in News Feed." OK... so they are saying they don't use your microphone to target ads. But how about precisely enumerating how FB uses your microphone? Do they use it for any purpose other than helping you communicate during a call? Do they try to infer any persona information about you, which can then be used indirectly to make money from your data? I too have had odd coincidences where eerily relevant ads show up after I have had a conversation. If only FB was more transparent about what they do, I might not be so paranoid about it.

linuxftw 9y ago
I think you're on to something here about the indirection. I too have witnessed the uncanny ads, but not even from my own phone (I don't have Facebook on my phone). A friend mentioned a particular restaurant I have never been to, been near, or searched for. I can only assume my friend's conversation was geo-tagged either by my phone (android, no non-system mic access), or the data was combined on the server end to place both of us at the same place / same time, and used his recording to market to me. I'd also like to note, the 'amount of bandwidth needed' is almost nothing by today's standards. Not to mention it can wait to transmit that data until on wifi. 8khz audio (telephone quality) is just kilobytes per second. A reasonably unsophisticated algorithm could trim the audio for an highs and lows (IE, statistically, sound below or above some dB threshold is trimmed because it won't be useful) and uploaded. We're talking about just a few kb per conversation. Of course, the Facebook app is a memory, storage, and cpu hog (IMO), so I don't think it's unreasonable that given today's modern phone hardware some word recognition software may be present on devices themselves.
- chemeng 9y ago
  I wonder whether there is another mechanism at play. Often when I have conversations with friends, it's likely that either I or they search a term, or have done so recently. Couple that with the social graph and location tracking, and it's very easy for Facebook/Google to target an ad knowing when I interacted with another person and assume that I may have interest in the term that was recently searched by them.
- SeanBoocock 9y ago
  Or consider another scenario: your friend went to said restaurant and paid for something; read an article about the restaurant; viewed/interacted with an ad for the restaurant; liked a social media post for the restaurant; or was geo-tagged at or around the restaurant. Any of the above would be sufficient to associate your friend and the restaurant, and I'd wager targeting your social graph after you've interacted with a product/service would have a good ROI.
  - parthdesai 9y ago
    Alright here's another anecdotal experience. To preface it, i don't have Fb app or messenger on my phone but have WhatsApp and Instagram. I opted out of whatsapp's data sharing policy when you were able to do it. So i was walking with co-workers for coffee and somehow we talked about a college. Now i can assure you that i have never ever searched for that college and i didn't even know it existed before that conversation took place. And 30 mins later, i'm browsing instagram at work and there is an ad of the said college. If this isn't creepy af, i dunno what is.
    - masonlee 9y ago
      College is running an ad campaign, one of your co-workers saw it (consciously or unconsciously) earlier in the day, and that is what lead to the college coming up in conversation?
      - parthdesai 9y ago
        Nah, we were talking about universities (i'm in Canada and almost every uni has an associated college) and topic shifted from that uni to college. Also, let's say what you are saying is true. How come ad decides to show up 30mins - 60 mins after conversation takes place?
        3131s 9y ago
        Your friend could have searched for the college before or after your discussion, or maybe even your friend had just been looking up old college friends on Facebook lately and that was enough to match up that ad and you. Not that I wouldn't put it past Facebook to do something like this, but it will be hard to prove from anecdotes because, ironically, Facebook captures so much other data that plausibly could reveal the same connections.
- antiviral 9y ago
  You don't need to transmit the audio. Just transcribe to text, remove any common or stop-words (a, an, the) and transmit what's left over in encrypted form to cover their tracks.
- giancarlostoro 9y ago
  A creepier one is before I proposed to my fiance I would now and then look up rings. One time I literally said "I need to look up some rings again" and went on Instagram not short after and BAM! There it was an advertisement for rings. It's too damn creepy of a coincidence, and I rarely ever believe in coincidences (sure enough more times than not they're not - at least in my experiences). There's been other moments of things I hadn't looked up or bought that I mentioned verbally and damn it, sure enough an ad on Instagram. It's downright witchcraft. Maybe I'll start documenting the phenomena every time it happens, maybe they'll auto take me out of the A/B testing for this by scraping HN. Ok I needa take off my tinfoil hat... Then again, could Google (Android is on my Phone) sell more detailed data to Facebook? I am going to heavily consider finally rooting my phone and installing a ROM on it.
  - ghostbrainalpha 9y ago
    I can't tell if you are being sarcastic or not..... Wedding rings have an EXTREMELY high margin, and almost infinite budget for advertising. If you google rings once, you will continue seeings ads for YEARS, regardless of any conversations you have. Honestly if Facebook knows you are in a relationship for 3+ years and you are under 35, you are going to start seeing ads for engagement rings even without searching for anything. If you really think they are getting you through the microphone, start talking to your phone without anyone around, while browsing Facebook about Baby Diapers, Baby Formula, and Baby Toys. Don't search for anything baby related, and obviously use something else if you are a Father already.
    - giancarlostoro 9y ago
      I'm mostly being a bit over dramatic about it, but I did suspect my mic being snooped on when it did happen, could you blame me / anyone? Hence this article was written. It's very reasonably a coincidence considering how often I would search for rings, but creepy nonetheless. Hadn't seen those ads prior to starting on my search though. My favorite is when you finally buy something and they still show you ads. Like a coworker mentioned, if I buy a refrigerator I don't need another one... I have one house! Come on! Maybe they do it in case you change your mind? Who knows how these ad companies think.
- chenning 9y ago
  I agree with this. I don't think these companies need to tap your phone to figure out how to choose an Ad for you. They can do an excellent job just knowing that someone is at your house looking up something specific. I suppose one could argue that your privacy is really only worth as much as the person standing next to you values theirs. People just need to understand that their personal privacy decisions really aren't so personal after all.
tim333 9y ago
Obviously facebook uses the microphone if you shoot video or make a call from the app, so the wording is not that odd.
IshKebab 9y ago
Yes in America while you are writing a status they use your microphone in a Shazam-like way to suggest things to put in your status. Apparently anyway. Not in America so can't test it.
code_duck 9y ago
I’ve wondered that, too. Their denial is suspiciously specific. In a personal experience that made me wonder if FB was listening through my phone, the item was a friend suggestion.
eeeeeeeeeeeee 9y ago
I've had discussions with people about things I've never searched for or purchased -- discussions around specific companies, and then the same day I start receiving advertisements for those companies, only on Facebook (don't even get Google ones). I have a hard time believing they are re-assembling this from purchase history or any other metadata they have that is not real time. I'm still looking for a simple explanation for this! Facebook is not a trustworthy company, so I have a hard time believing them about this. But it's why I don't install ANY Facebook applications on my phone anymore and that includes Messenger and Instagram, or any other company they purchase.
- wgerard 9y ago
  The simple explanation and (maybe scary) truth is that we're a lot more predictable than we think. Remember when Target got into hot water for outing a pregnant teenager based on an assortment of items she bought [1]? That was based on items like scent-free soap, cotton balls, and vitamin supplements. That was 6 years ago and (no offense to Target) done by a company that isn't nearly as adept at doing that kind of targeted advertising or inference. For example, Facebook might know (hypothetically) that you're a young adult in the tech field who lives in Brooklyn and spends a lot of time looking at photography or you're friends with a lot of amateur photographers. So they show you ads for high-end cameras from the most popular vendors, knowing that you're likely to develop an interest in photography if you haven't already. That's just an extremely simple example, you can imagine that there are far more subtle indicators about someone's interests or likely interests (like the cotton balls for pregnancy). The timing is almost certainly a coincidence. It's far more likely they show you those ads all the time and you're just noticing them when the coincidence occurs because you're on high alert now for things like this. 1: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-target-figured-out-a-teen-girl-was-pregnant-before-her-father-did/#c78964e66686 https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-targ...
  - fny 9y ago
    I actually don't think the timing is a coincidence... OP says: > I've had discussions with people about things I've never searched for or purchased That doesn't mean his network hasn't been searching for or purchasing those things or leaving behind other breadcrumbs... which is probably enough for Facebook to guess you're a decent candidate for the ads.
fny 9y ago
The point of the article is you should be even more paranoid about what Facebook has without your microphone. With the amount of data that's floating out there about you and your friends, these coincidences are way, way more likely, and are very reasonable if you think about it. Your friend told you about some restaurant, and then an ad shows up on Facebook. Why is your friend telling you about it? Maybe he went there recently enough? Maybe he gave the restaurant a review? Maybe the restaurant has a list of people who've been to the restaurant before and is using Facebook ad manager to target those people and their friends? It's on his mind, so maybe that's causing him to leave enough breadcrumbs behind to make Facebook have an inkling of his interest, and you're his friend so Facebook knows to perhaps nudge you as well. And maybe Facebook actually has some idea that you and that person are meeting (yay geotracking!) Now add a prediction system driven by deep learning models that are terrifyingly good at finding signal with a decent dose of probability (think of all the conversations you've had that didn't result in eery advertising), and you've got yourself a frightening reality where a company doesn't need your thoughts to make a decent guess about what you're thinking. Frankly it might not even be this complicated. Maybe your network searching for or purchasing things is enough for Facebook to guess you're a decent candidate for the ad too, and you guys just happen to meet up on the same day.

linuxftw 9y ago

I think you're on to something here about the indirection. I too have witnessed the uncanny ads, but not even from my own phone (I don't have Facebook on my phone). A friend mentioned a particular restaurant I have never been to, been near, or searched for. I can only assume my friend's conversation was geo-tagged either by my phone (android, no non-system mic access), or the data was combined on the server end to place both of us at the same place / same time, and used his recording to market to me. I'd also like to note, the 'amount of bandwidth needed' is almost nothing by today's standards. Not to mention it can wait to transmit that data until on wifi. 8khz audio (telephone quality) is just kilobytes per second. A reasonably unsophisticated algorithm could trim the audio for an highs and lows (IE, statistically, sound below or above some dB threshold is trimmed because it won't be useful) and uploaded. We're talking about just a few kb per conversation. Of course, the Facebook app is a memory, storage, and cpu hog (IMO), so I don't think it's unreasonable that given today's modern phone hardware some word recognition software may be present on devices themselves.

chemeng 9y ago
I wonder whether there is another mechanism at play. Often when I have conversations with friends, it's likely that either I or they search a term, or have done so recently. Couple that with the social graph and location tracking, and it's very easy for Facebook/Google to target an ad knowing when I interacted with another person and assume that I may have interest in the term that was recently searched by them.
SeanBoocock 9y ago
Or consider another scenario: your friend went to said restaurant and paid for something; read an article about the restaurant; viewed/interacted with an ad for the restaurant; liked a social media post for the restaurant; or was geo-tagged at or around the restaurant. Any of the above would be sufficient to associate your friend and the restaurant, and I'd wager targeting your social graph after you've interacted with a product/service would have a good ROI.
- parthdesai 9y ago
  Alright here's another anecdotal experience. To preface it, i don't have Fb app or messenger on my phone but have WhatsApp and Instagram. I opted out of whatsapp's data sharing policy when you were able to do it. So i was walking with co-workers for coffee and somehow we talked about a college. Now i can assure you that i have never ever searched for that college and i didn't even know it existed before that conversation took place. And 30 mins later, i'm browsing instagram at work and there is an ad of the said college. If this isn't creepy af, i dunno what is.
  - masonlee 9y ago
    College is running an ad campaign, one of your co-workers saw it (consciously or unconsciously) earlier in the day, and that is what lead to the college coming up in conversation?
    - parthdesai 9y ago
      Nah, we were talking about universities (i'm in Canada and almost every uni has an associated college) and topic shifted from that uni to college. Also, let's say what you are saying is true. How come ad decides to show up 30mins - 60 mins after conversation takes place?
      - 3131s 9y ago
        Your friend could have searched for the college before or after your discussion, or maybe even your friend had just been looking up old college friends on Facebook lately and that was enough to match up that ad and you. Not that I wouldn't put it past Facebook to do something like this, but it will be hard to prove from anecdotes because, ironically, Facebook captures so much other data that plausibly could reveal the same connections.
antiviral 9y ago
You don't need to transmit the audio. Just transcribe to text, remove any common or stop-words (a, an, the) and transmit what's left over in encrypted form to cover their tracks.
giancarlostoro 9y ago
A creepier one is before I proposed to my fiance I would now and then look up rings. One time I literally said "I need to look up some rings again" and went on Instagram not short after and BAM! There it was an advertisement for rings. It's too damn creepy of a coincidence, and I rarely ever believe in coincidences (sure enough more times than not they're not - at least in my experiences). There's been other moments of things I hadn't looked up or bought that I mentioned verbally and damn it, sure enough an ad on Instagram. It's downright witchcraft. Maybe I'll start documenting the phenomena every time it happens, maybe they'll auto take me out of the A/B testing for this by scraping HN. Ok I needa take off my tinfoil hat... Then again, could Google (Android is on my Phone) sell more detailed data to Facebook? I am going to heavily consider finally rooting my phone and installing a ROM on it.
- ghostbrainalpha 9y ago
  I can't tell if you are being sarcastic or not..... Wedding rings have an EXTREMELY high margin, and almost infinite budget for advertising. If you google rings once, you will continue seeings ads for YEARS, regardless of any conversations you have. Honestly if Facebook knows you are in a relationship for 3+ years and you are under 35, you are going to start seeing ads for engagement rings even without searching for anything. If you really think they are getting you through the microphone, start talking to your phone without anyone around, while browsing Facebook about Baby Diapers, Baby Formula, and Baby Toys. Don't search for anything baby related, and obviously use something else if you are a Father already.
  - giancarlostoro 9y ago
    I'm mostly being a bit over dramatic about it, but I did suspect my mic being snooped on when it did happen, could you blame me / anyone? Hence this article was written. It's very reasonably a coincidence considering how often I would search for rings, but creepy nonetheless. Hadn't seen those ads prior to starting on my search though. My favorite is when you finally buy something and they still show you ads. Like a coworker mentioned, if I buy a refrigerator I don't need another one... I have one house! Come on! Maybe they do it in case you change your mind? Who knows how these ad companies think.
chenning 9y ago
I agree with this. I don't think these companies need to tap your phone to figure out how to choose an Ad for you. They can do an excellent job just knowing that someone is at your house looking up something specific. I suppose one could argue that your privacy is really only worth as much as the person standing next to you values theirs. People just need to understand that their personal privacy decisions really aren't so personal after all.

tim333 9y ago

Obviously facebook uses the microphone if you shoot video or make a call from the app, so the wording is not that odd.

IshKebab 9y ago

Yes in America while you are writing a status they use your microphone in a Shazam-like way to suggest things to put in your status. Apparently anyway. Not in America so can't test it.

code_duck 9y ago

I’ve wondered that, too. Their denial is suspiciously specific. In a personal experience that made me wonder if FB was listening through my phone, the item was a friend suggestion.

eeeeeeeeeeeee 9y ago

I've had discussions with people about things I've never searched for or purchased -- discussions around specific companies, and then the same day I start receiving advertisements for those companies, only on Facebook (don't even get Google ones). I have a hard time believing they are re-assembling this from purchase history or any other metadata they have that is not real time. I'm still looking for a simple explanation for this! Facebook is not a trustworthy company, so I have a hard time believing them about this. But it's why I don't install ANY Facebook applications on my phone anymore and that includes Messenger and Instagram, or any other company they purchase.

wgerard 9y ago
The simple explanation and (maybe scary) truth is that we're a lot more predictable than we think. Remember when Target got into hot water for outing a pregnant teenager based on an assortment of items she bought [1]? That was based on items like scent-free soap, cotton balls, and vitamin supplements. That was 6 years ago and (no offense to Target) done by a company that isn't nearly as adept at doing that kind of targeted advertising or inference. For example, Facebook might know (hypothetically) that you're a young adult in the tech field who lives in Brooklyn and spends a lot of time looking at photography or you're friends with a lot of amateur photographers. So they show you ads for high-end cameras from the most popular vendors, knowing that you're likely to develop an interest in photography if you haven't already. That's just an extremely simple example, you can imagine that there are far more subtle indicators about someone's interests or likely interests (like the cotton balls for pregnancy). The timing is almost certainly a coincidence. It's far more likely they show you those ads all the time and you're just noticing them when the coincidence occurs because you're on high alert now for things like this. 1: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-target-figured-out-a-teen-girl-was-pregnant-before-her-father-did/#c78964e66686 https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-targ...
- fny 9y ago
  I actually don't think the timing is a coincidence... OP says: > I've had discussions with people about things I've never searched for or purchased That doesn't mean his network hasn't been searching for or purchasing those things or leaving behind other breadcrumbs... which is probably enough for Facebook to guess you're a decent candidate for the ads.

fny 9y ago

The point of the article is you should be even more paranoid about what Facebook has without your microphone. With the amount of data that's floating out there about you and your friends, these coincidences are way, way more likely, and are very reasonable if you think about it. Your friend told you about some restaurant, and then an ad shows up on Facebook. Why is your friend telling you about it? Maybe he went there recently enough? Maybe he gave the restaurant a review? Maybe the restaurant has a list of people who've been to the restaurant before and is using Facebook ad manager to target those people and their friends? It's on his mind, so maybe that's causing him to leave enough breadcrumbs behind to make Facebook have an inkling of his interest, and you're his friend so Facebook knows to perhaps nudge you as well. And maybe Facebook actually has some idea that you and that person are meeting (yay geotracking!) Now add a prediction system driven by deep learning models that are terrifyingly good at finding signal with a decent dose of probability (think of all the conversations you've had that didn't result in eery advertising), and you've got yourself a frightening reality where a company doesn't need your thoughts to make a decent guess about what you're thinking. Frankly it might not even be this complicated. Maybe your network searching for or purchasing things is enough for Facebook to guess you're a decent candidate for the ad too, and you guys just happen to meet up on the same day.